"E. C. Tubb - Dumarest 01 - The Winds of Gath" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tubb E. C)

value only while I remain detached." He spoke his credo in the
same soft, even modulation he would use to announce the arrival
of battle, murder, and sudden death.

She hid her repulsion as she heard it. It was instinctive, this
dislike of hers for the cyber. As a woman she was proud of her
sex and the power it gave. She liked to read desire in the eyes of
men but she had never read it in the eyes of Dyne. She would
never read it. No woman ever would.
 At five he had been chosen. At fifteen, after a forced puberty,
he had undergone an operation on the thalamus. He could feel
no joy, no hate, no desire, no pain. He was a coldly logical
machine of flesh and blood, a detached, dispassionate human
robot. The only pleasure he could know was the mental
satisfaction of correct deduction.

"It seems to me," she said slowly, "that your logic is at fault.
To make a martyr is a mistake. Martyrs make causes."

"Not unless there is a cause to make," he corrected.

"The man was a paid assassin. He knew the risk he ran and
accepted it. The opposition on Kund, My Lady, is not of the
masses. It is common knowledge that the rule of the Matriarch
has been benevolent."

"That is true."

"It is also well known that she is no longer young and has still
not named her successor."

She nodded, impatient with him for laboring the obvious.

"That is why the site of the execution was chosen so carefully,"
he murmured. "It was no accident that the man was impaled
before the residence of the Lady Moira."

The suggestion was outrageous. Seena both knew and liked
the woman. "You say that she would employ an assassin?
Ridiculous!"

Dyne remained silent.

"The Lady Moira is rich and powerful," she admitted. "But she
is a woman of honor."

"Honor, My Lady, can mean many things to many people."

"But assassinationтАФ"